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Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Used in what manner? How does "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" address anything that couldn't have been accomplished by creating new characters interacting with zombies?
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Because it might be funny as a story in itself, but it's a lot funnier if you already know the character's from Austen's novel. Although I didn't find
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies all that great anyway.
But think of something like Jasper Fforde's
Thursday Next novels. They wouldn't make any sense at all if they couldn't use fictional characters that everybody knows. There are so many allusions and jokes that wouldn't work. Or, also mentioned before, Tom Stoppard's
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The whole play lives from the use of Shakespeare's characters.
Or think of how much modernist literature lives from incorporating quotes from older works.
Or take Bob Dylan: For over twenty years, basically everything he has written has been stitched together from quotes taken from everybody: from Ovid to Time magazine, and digging into the sources can give the writing new dimensions. (Of course Dylan is rich enough to blithely ignore copyright; he just goes ahead and uses anything, and if somebody sues, he settles with them. Not an MO everybody can afford, but the way he works with other texts should be open to every writer at least for PD stuff.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Then make eternal copyright selective. Since most laws are arbitrary to begin with, exempt the Mouse and move on. It's very doable. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition.
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Good luck with that. So who should get eternal copyright and why? I don't see that as a workable proposition at all.